


I Taught Myself This Lesson

by HazelMaeve



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Azula (mentioned) - Freeform, Ding dong the witch is dead, Fire Lord Zuko, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Ozai (Avatar) Dies, Post-War, Retribution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 19:22:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30127647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HazelMaeve/pseuds/HazelMaeve
Summary: Several weeks after the end of the war, Fire Lord Zuko visits his father in prison. Maybe it's for retribution, some sense of justice, or maybe it's his own selfish desire to move on.Ozai learns that while Zuko may not be like his father, he most certainly isn't weak.
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Ozai & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 92





	I Taught Myself This Lesson

The stone-walled corridor was chilly and damp, dimly lit by the smallest of flames. The door to the cell was flanked by two bending guards, who eyed the approach of their new Fire Lord with barely-concealed apprehension. They were not yet used to a leader who would not cut them down for the smallest grievance. He gestured for them to open the door, and they scurried to do so. A sliver of amber light from the hall slid into the room, the first light the cell had seen in weeks.   


Behind thick iron bars knelt a figure, clothed in a grey tunic and chains to match. Zuko barely recognized him but for the curtain of long, dark hair, half-obscuring what had once been the face of his nightmares. But no longer.    


“Let me into the cell.” Zuko’s quiet voice nonetheless carried to every corner of the room and seemed to linger there, watching. One of the guards tensed.   


“But, sir--”   


“Open it.”

The guard hesitated; the prisoner was chained, his wrists bound behind him and his bending gone. Still. He fumbled for the key and slid it into the locked door, then stood back to allow the burned man through.

His father did not look up at the approach of his oldest child. Zuko did not particularly mind. He could wait. The cell clanked shut behind him, and Zuko stood in the center of the cold floor, his red wool robe and royal armor standing out amid the miserable hues of the room.

At last, Ozai lifted his eyes. Twin gold orbs glinting with fury, though flames no longer burned behind them. Zuko looked. He had expected to feel something-- anger, fear, outrage, bitterness-- but he felt only disappointment. Those eyes were his own, and Uncle’s, and Azula’s. He was tired of seeing hate in them. He didn’t want  _ anger _ to be the royal family’s legacy any longer. 

Ozai seemed determined not to speak first, but when Zuko held his silence, he proved relatively easy to break. “So.” The word was a sneer. “The ersatz Fire Lord has graced me with his presence.” No reply. “You bring your honorless face before me, expecting me to grovel? Expecting me to  _ repent? _ You’ve clearly learned  _ nothing. _ Three years, living with a brand of shame, and you’ve only become weaker.”

Zuko said nothing. He thought of the occupied villages he’d visited, that he’d restled from rebel control, the starved faces who’d wept in the face of liberation. The palace servants and guards who still flinched when Zuko looked at them directly. The way Azula seemed to shrink a little, when Zuko stepped into her room in Fire Lord’s robes. All this propelled him to step forward, and place his hand over his father’s left eye.

Ozai stiffened, his other eye going wide. Zuko pondered over the change-- his father on his knees before him, powerless, at his mercy. He thought he ought to feel some sense of justice. But he only felt the curve of his father’s skull beneath his hand. Undoubtedly what Ozai had felt, three years ago, except Zuko’s had been a child’s face, with a flat brow and round cheeks and smooth child’s skin that Ozai had then burned away.

These thoughts accompanied him as he began to channel heat into his palm. He saw the tense line of Ozai’s shoulders twitch, saw the rage in the gold eye turn to something indignant, but uncertain. He thought of the weeks, lying in his ship’s medical bay, the skin of his face charred and crispy so it cracked when he moved, the skin peeling off in layers. It hadn’t even occurred to him to be angry at his father; he was furious with himself. He thought Uncle was, too. But Zuko was not the one Uncle was angry at. 

He let his hand increase in temperature, until he felt it pulsing in his fingertips and Ozai’s furious expression finally cracked, before Zuko pulled his hand away.

Ozai blinked, bewildered, his skin slightly pink but unharmed. As Zuko watched his handprint fade from his father’s face and Ozai seemed to realize what had just happened, the sneer returned. Ozai opened his mouth, no doubt to say something snide about cowardice, but Zuko cut him off.

“I don’t forgive you,” he said softly. He remembered Katara’s words, after she’d confronted the man who’d murdered her mother, and let him go. “I’ll  _ never _ forgive you.” He thought of Uncle smiling when Zuko had finally prepared a decent cup of tea, of Azula accepting his offer to braid her hair. Of his face in the mirror three years ago, versus the face he saw today. “But I’m not angry anymore.”

Ozai faltered, bewildered out of his mocking. Zuko met his eyes levelly. Then, almost as an afterthought, he reached for the  _ dao _ swords at his waist.

This time, Ozai did not waist time with outrage. He knew that Zuko was not capable of burning another man’s face, but he  _ also _ knew that Zuko had trained with swords for  _ years _ , that he held a blade more confidently than he’d ever held a flame, that he was more than capable of slicing a man’s head off without so much as dirtying the blade--

But Zuko did not take his father’s head. He took his hair. Gathered it up behind him and sliced it clean through, leaving behind a short, shaggy scruff. Zuko stepped back and let the long strands fall to his feet, the way tears and blood had fallen on the arena floor, and Ozai  _ blinked. _ Shorn, like a sheep. Honorless.

Zuko  _ looked _ at him, really looked, and saw not a monster, just a man. A broken one. Not his father anymore.

He turned and stepped out of the cell. The guard’s face was a mask of shock, whether at the display of mercy, or the sight of his former Fire Lord so belittled. Zuko gestured for him to shut the door, and he did, cutting off the sight of Ozai staring at his locks. He hadn’t offered any parting words or any kind of apology, for what he’d done to Zuko or Azula or the world, but Zuko didn’t need any. The guard did not flinch when Zuko looked at him, and that was satisfying enough.

  
  
  


Six months later, Zuko received word that Fire Lord Ozai had expired in his cell, his life force damaged from the loss of his bending, his will seemingly crushed. Zuko did not tell Aang this, or Azula, or anyone. He folded the scroll and set it aflame in his palm, then let the ashes slip through his fingers into the dust bin. He had work to do-- good work, healing work-- and Ozai had no part in it.

Iroh saw to the cremation and burial. The ‘burial’ consisted of dropping his brother’s urn into the ocean near a volcano, so Ozai might  _ see _ the island erupting but never feel its warmth. An eternity cold, wanting, reaching, not so different than the one he’d tried to inflict on his son. Iroh held his hand up to Agni, then turned away. 

Justice, once a foreign concept under Ozai’s rule, had been done. 

**Author's Note:**

> lemme know whatcha think!


End file.
